Dear Callum,

You are in a very creative and inventive stage. Sometimes it can be exhausting—I spend most of my day managing your online school activities, and then in your downtime you often want to do a craft project or other activity. Other times you’re okay with playing Switch, so depending on what else I need to accomplish during the day, either option may occur. This afternoon, for example, you held me to my promise that we could rake leaves into a pile. You had a lot of fun jumping into them with Tobin, but when you were all done, you weren’t so crazy about the idea of me raking them to the curb for the suck truck.

I was able to convince you to move some of the leaves to the garden. You helped me plant garlic on Saturday, and we hadn’t yet put leaves on the garlic bed to mulch them. We got that done today, and you were very sweet and tender about tucking the baby garlic cloves in under the leaf blanket so they could be cozy for winter. You’re a snuggly and cozy guy, so it made sense to you that the garlic needed the same kind of care.

You get so attached to things. I don’t know where you got the impression that you live in a world of shortage, because we are very fortunate, and I can’t think of a time when you didn’t have enough of anything. A family joke is that you are emotionally attached to food leftovers, though you never actually eat them. Heaven forbid I try to throw away the half-bowl of pasta you didn’t finish, because you’re quite sure you will eat it for lunch the next day. Then the next day comes, and toast sounds a lot better to you than pasta (which is presumably why you didn’t finish it the night before). Then the pasta sits in the fridge and I forget about it for weeks until it’s totally unusable.

Another craft project you recently made was based on a school activity. The first letter in your Language Arts curriculum was C, which naturally is one you already know well.  The unit had all kinds of C connections, including a kid named Cass who likes to cook concoctions.  One of her concoctions was the Crunchy Castle, and you had a lot of fun making it based on the instructions in your book. We sent a picture of you with your crunchy castle to your teacher, Ms. Kurtz, and your favorite teaching assistant, Ms. Dee.  They both got a kick out of it. I hope things like that help them get to know you a little better. Of course Ms. Dee already knows and loves you, but the online format can be challenging in the area of forging personal connections.

Halloween is coming up, and while we don’t know for sure how we’re going to handle the festivities, you and your brothers are firmly on board with costumes. I decided to get your costume early, since you were excited about it, and it seemed like there was no good reason not to enjoy the safe elements of Halloween as much as we can. If the weather is good on the actual day, we’re thinking about having a candy hunt in the park behind our house, and inviting neighborhood families to participate and contribute candy. Since Halloween is on a Saturday, we could spread things out and not have too many kids together at once. That all depends on a lot of factors, including the cooperation of the neighborhood families and decent weather, but it could be a safer way to have some fun.

In the overlapping Venn diagram of your interest in crafts and Halloween, we made some ghost garland that we’ve hung in different parts of the house. We might have to make some more to put in the park on the day of the celebration. I hope it doesn’t rain, because I think the glue we used to form the ghost shapes is water-soluble, and that could make for some pretty droopy spooks. You chose a pre-fab costume, which is convenient since your brothers chose costumes that are going to take a lot of work. I bet you’ll want to get in on the crafting process of their costumes, though.

You also celebrated a very big milestone last weekend: you learned to ride a big-kid bike. Your dad was sure you were ready, because you’d been gliding around on your Strider bike with confidence for months. We had plans to spend time with Nana and Papa at a state park on a beautiful fall day, so your dad loaded the smallest of our pedal-equipped two-wheelers and your helmet. You tend to be nervous about trying new things, and it took some convincing (and brownies, as evidenced by your face in the picture below), but once you worked up the courage to try, you caught on almost immediately. You didn’t take any spills, and you never wanted to stop. You even insisted on riding on the sidewalk once we got home, despite it being dark. Your dad was a good sport about it, and he agreed that it was useful for you to have some good confidence-building successes under your belt.

Your current favorites: riding your bike, making your breakfast order (“Waffles how I always like it and orange juice how I always like it but lemonade“), crafting, Untitled Goose Game on the Switch, Wild Kratts, the bedtimes stories What Should Danny Do? and Mice and Beans, playing with your brothers, and making tall block towers. Consistent with your reluctance to dismantle leaf piles and throw away leftovers, you got quite upset when your dad took down a tower so he could play blocks with you. The audacity, I know.

Your personality is emerging more every day, my little sweetheart. You are funny and smart and learning so much. Even though doing online school with you is a lot of work, it’s also a special privilege that I get to witness your academic growth directly. Thanks for still thinking it’s cool to hang out with me.

Love,

Mommy